


Poached

by meaninglessblah



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Alternate Universe - Space, Dick Grayson is a Mermaid, Jason Todd is his First Mate, M/M, Merpeople, More tags to follow, Multi, Slade Wilson is a Space Captain, Space Pirates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-06-25 07:22:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19740928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meaninglessblah/pseuds/meaninglessblah
Summary: Slade and Jason are space pirates hunting merman Dick. What more could you want?





	1. Abaft

Slade wakes because his ship is humming. 

It’s a low, unerring thrum that’s singing through the reinforced metal, pressing tight against the orderly rivets. To the untrained ear, it could almost be misconstrued as the whine of an unaligned engine or the drone of high-powered machinery. But Slade knows it’s just a few notes high of the sound his engines make, and his engines are almost entirely dormant for the sleep cycle. 

He wastes no time sliding from his bed, snatching up his jacket and shrugging into it as his feet hit the uncomfortably cool metal floors. He can feel the hum here, too, loud and vibrant enough to echo up though his calves. The floor is not cold enough to have him lurch back, but it’s enough that his soles protests until he yanks his boots on, tying the laces with efficient, methodical movements. 

Then he sweeps out of the captain’s chambers, taking the steep stairs up to the stern deck, which is now alive with activity. His crew is in varying states of dress, the night crew discernable by their hardy suits, and the day crew still in mismatched sleepwear. Inevitably, everyone is awake though, and Slade passes through the stragglers that part for him, bustling on their routes to prepare the ship. 

There’s only about twelve men on the upper deck, and Slade casts his gaze up to note the furled solarsails, bound and tight to their masts, as he crosses the midship and descends to the main quarters. His first mate is here, and Slade can tell he’s been roused from his sleep cycle by the dark shadows under his stern eyes and the thin black singlet he has on. He’s got it half-tucked into his breeches, and those tucked into his thick-soled boots, so Slade assumes he dressed as he crossed the halls. 

The younger man catches sight of Slade as he approaches, that trademark scowl lighting up his blue-green eyes. “Slade,” he growls. “‘Bout fucking time.” 

Slade swallows his smirk. He’s perhaps only a minute behind his first mate, going by how many men are still milling about awaiting orders. And if he takes into account the fact that his first mate chambers closer to the midship than Slade himself, that difference is negligible. 

“Tuck your shirt,” Slade murmurs back in his low, gravelly tone, and his first mate grumbles, but reaches back to shove the dark material into his breeches. 

Slade brushes past him in the narrow hallway, and the man falls into step behind him, travelling in his wake as the assembled crew parts for them. His first mate tosses out short, sharp orders as he passes, and the crowd dissipates quickly as they descend into the forecastle. 

“How long’s it been at it?” Slade asks in the quiet and dimness of the next empty hallway. His bootsteps reverberate back at him from the narrow corridor, but it’s not enough to drown out that incessant hum. 

“About four minutes,” his first mate replies, his tone taking on that easy, militaristic lull as he briefs his superior officer. “Bosun called it in just after midmorn.” 

Slade hums his acknowledgement, shifting down another corridor. The man at his heels follows, matched flawlessly to his sturdy pace. He knows from his brief passage across the upper deck that the bosun seeing anything at all is a small feat. Their nearest star and source of ambient light is four thousand clicks behind them, and filtered through a stagnant asteroid field. Their next star is twice that distance away, hence the sails being drawn up. They’ve been running on battery life for a full day now, and most of the crew has amicably adjusted to the near impermeable darkness above deck. 

“Must be sizeable,” Slade offers conversationally, and his first mate huffs in a sound that’s not entirely _not_ irritation. “You disagree?” 

“The bosun reckons it’s ten, maybe fifteen feet at full pelt?” he supplies, and Slade’s pleasantly surprised. Not that he lets it marr his impassive features. It’s not the largest he’s seen, but definitely an adult. Doesn’t match to the melodic purr that’s vibrating through his ship, though. It’s a testament to their time together than his first mate can read his skepticism from the tilt of his shoulders and nothing more. “You disagree.” 

It’s a conclusion, but it’s a prompt, too. “It’s mature,” Slade answers without looking back. The sealed doors of the foremost antechamber loom into view, and Slade slides the vertical lever to disable the temporary locks. “If it’s hitting a range this low, it’s definitely got a few years on it. Even if it’s not overly large.” 

“How old?” his first mate asks, betraying his first hints of curiosity. Slade fixes him with a discerning look that he immediately shrugs off, stepping into the antechamber with him so he can seal the door lock. “Just because I’m interested doesn’t mean I _approve_.” 

“I don’t particularly care whether you approve, Todd,” Slade replies, and the younger man huffs again, dragging fingers through his loose fringe. “Is the cargo secured?” 

“First thing I did as soon as the call went out. It’s a bastard’s chore every time you decide to try wrangling one of these beasts,” he protests with a thick undercurrent of displeasure. “And I’m the one who gets to rectify the ship once you’re finished with your rampage. Not to mention calming down a superstitious crew.” 

“Crews that aren’t superstitious won’t travel this far into decharted space,” Slade answers. 

“That’s because you’d have to be insane or a fool to go this far out from colonised territory,” Jason growls in counter, turning to wrap his fingers around the nearest spare suit jacket as Slade shucks his own. 

“So which is it?” Slade asks with a quiet smirk, shrugging into the offered garment and buckling the orange clasps across the front. They seal with a soft hiss, the seam almost indiscernible. He finds the matching gloves stashed in a pocket across the midsection, and wastes no time slipping into them. 

Jason frowns, handing him the accompanying charcoal-black pants. “Which is what?” 

Salde pulls them over his trousers, waiting until they’ve finished forming an airtight seal with the tops of his boots and the base of the jacket. “Am I a fool or insane?” 

Jason’s scowl darkens as he offers him the helmet. “Both,” he snarls, and Slade barks a short laugh as he pulls it onto his head. “I still don’t understand why you insist on wrangling these things yourself.” 

Slade steps up to the main chamber door, glancing back at his first mate as the visor flickers to life. The sturdily-built man is cast in a shadowed sheen under his visor’s artificial view, but Slade can still determine the disapproving downturn of his lips. “It’s good practice,” he supplies carelessly, and turns back as the doors slide open. 

Jason’s voice murmurs right into his ear, distorted slightly with the technological interference. “Practice for what, exactly?” 

He waits until the doors have sealed behind him before he meets his first mate’s gaze through the viewing port window between them. “Maybe I’ll wrangle you later and show you,” Slade offers casually, and doesn’t miss the flush that lights up the man’s features. He never tires of that colour, even after all these years. 

Jason’s a good first mate. He’s unerringly loyal, and has a knack for fitting in amongst the crew. He’s relatable - a quality that Slade, both by merit of position and demeanour, lacks. If there’s a problem amongst his men, Jason’s the first to hear of it, and he parrots it immediately up the line to Slade, so he’s never needed to be particularly approachable on-board his own ship. He prefers it that way, honestly. Letting Jason deal with the inane daily routine allows him to focus on their pursuits. 

Like their current pursuit, who currently seems determined to shake the rivets of Slade’s very expensive ship right out of their sockets. 

“Brace,” Jason instructs, and Slade wraps a gloved hand around the nearest girder as the floor falls out beneath him with the blare of a warning alarm. Or, more accurately, he falls out from above the floor; he’s the one who shifts in the lapse of the artificial gravity, not it. 

He’s more than physically capable of holding himself stable in the vacuum of space with just the single hand he has wrapped around the unyielding girder, but he grips with his other hand too to better his angle before he pushes off. 

“Gods, you’re impatient,” Jason grumbles in his ear as he beelines for the main hatch, which splits open hastily at Jason’s command, back at the antechamber control panels. 

There’s no light up this end of the ship; they’re angled away from their last star. But the sprinkle of dull white specks still brings a fond smile to Slade’s face, deep in the privacy of his suit and helmet. It stretches out endlessly before him, looking almost flat in its impenetrability. But he knows from experience just how absolutely vast space can be, even before he started commissioning ships to explore deep decharted space, beyond where the colonies had withdrawn their boundary lines. 

It’s not _new_ space; other explorers have been here before him, and he’s sure many will come after. But it feels untamed, virgin in its vastness. There’s a savage quality to its endless depths, a promise of inevitability that breeds death and inexorable destruction. Slade knows it’s less a matter of skill, and more a matter of time that determines the sanctity of their voyage. This ship will crumble to the incessant pressures of open space; it’s merely a question of whether he’s still aboard its decks when it does. The challenge thrills him indescribably. 

He takes a firm grip of the frame of the hatch when he breaches the confines of the ship, feeling the last barrier of the artificial gravity field relinquish its hold on him, offering him up to the graces of a vast and ever-expanding god. Space can be a cruel mistress to those who don’t heed her perils, who are lured by her beauty. Slade had been a young and awestruck sailor once, a long time ago now, so he knows the danger in being swept up by her magnificence. 

There’s a series of handles welded to the bow, immediately outside the hatch, and Slade shifts to grasp one of them firmly as he orders, “Keep the hatch open.” 

“Last time I did that, you lodged an asteroid in our inner hull walls,” Jason reminds him drily. “I lost three men trying to plug the leak.” 

“Then they weren’t very capable men,” Slade answers, flattening a palm to the coarse pane of the hull, pockmarked with tiny shards of rock that they’ve accumulated on their travels. He presses the meat of his gloved thumb to the button just aside his index knuckle, and feels the suction of the magnet fuse him to the metal sheet. 

“You’re looking stable,” Jason reports, and Slade knows he’s pouring over his suit’s data, back in the safety of the antechamber. 

He crooks a smile where his first mate can’t see. “Are you worried for me, Jason?” 

Jason scoffs, but it’s underscored by a slight waver that tells of his embarrassment. “Hardly. You’d be a bitch to replace at the next port.” Slade pauses, sobering for a moment as he waits for Jason to address the latent worry in his tone. It takes a long minute, but then he adds, stilted, “Don’t die out there.” 

“I’ve done this before,” Slade reminds him. “Many times.” 

“So has the hull crew,” Jason growls back, recovering from the sentiment of the moment with characteristic gruffness. “And yet you still insist on _personally_ seeing to these pests.” 

“I’ll bring you back a gift, shall I?” Slade croons, and can practically feel Jason’s glare as he begins to descend the curve of the hull. “A scale, maybe?” 

“Just hurry up and get your ass back on this ship where it belongs.” 

Slade smirks and weaves around the forepost that juts out ahead of the hull, catching the glint of a twinkling star off its polished length. It’s unbearably dark out here, everything shrouded in shadow and silence as he transverses the hull, headed for the keel. 

He can’t say why this beast is so far outside the gleam of a star. More often he and his crew run into trouble like this while cruising around a deserted sol, spotting the beasts while they admire themselves in the reflection of the solarsails. The sheer sight of them is usually enough to move a ship on; the savage creatures are usually more trouble than they're worth, and most sailors are superstitious enough to pull up anchor at the first glint of iridescent scales. 

He hadn’t seen a mermaid this side of the Magellanic in years. Most of them have been hunted into localised extinction by the better equipped of the spacial vessels that cross these asteroid reefs. Mermaid scales fetch a pretty penny at most ports, and the bones are rumoured to house medicinal properties. He’s even seen the leathered skin of one used decoratively before. 

Most of the mermaids in this area don’t start to crop up until Zeta Mensae rears up on the horizon. They’ve got another few weeks before they even clock Eta, so Slade hadn’t been expecting to run into any merfolk yet. 

This one comes as a pleasant surprise, though. If his bosun is to be believed, he’s relatively small for his age, if the deep thrums that Slade can feel through his gloves are anything to go off. A bass note this low speaks of a few decades of maturity. He’s definitely past his adolescence, but Slade can’t tell for certain how far past. An adult mer is still a decent threat though, regardless of size, so Slade resolves to keep his everpresent wits about him. 

He spots the creature when he reaches the low point of the keel. It’s laid flat against the hull, chest pressed to a flat pane of metal further towards the stern. Which explains why Slade was woken by it’s thrumming, his chambers being set so far back and low in the aft of the ship. 

Slade slows his inertia, letting it wash off him as he stills, concealed partially by the raised jut of the keel beside him. The mer is curled around an auxiliary rudder, its tail fins flexing gently as it better positions itself against the hull, it’s humming strengthening as it finds a better contact point. This close, the vibrations are beginning to numb Slade’s muscles, even within the gloves. 

He skirts further up the keel to get a closer look at the beast, trying to place exactly how long it is. It’s difficult to tell with it coiled so, but if Slade follows the arch of a blue-tinted tail, he can estimate that it’s about twelve feet in length. 

It’s a beautiful thing, that tail. It looks like it’s been dipped in a carbon ocean - it’s such a vibrant shade of blue. It glints under the gleam of that passed star, throwing off the light in a dazzling display of mirage as it shifts ever slightly across the hull of his ship. It’s one long, unbroken curve of muscle, packed tight and entirely lethal under its own power. A near pass would render enough force to pry Slade from the hull, even with his magnetised gloves. A glancing blow would easily pulverise half his ribcage. 

Slade dips over the flat of the keel, changing course to bring himself closer to the bulwark, skirting the steep rise of the hull, where the metal flattens. From up here, he can see around that lethal mass of tail, to the pale expanse of a lean back, stark against the gunmetal grey of his ship. 

Its elbows are crooked back above the mounds of its shoulders, jutting out from its sides like fins. Its palms are fused to the hull, and Slade can just discern the glint of razor-sharp nails hitched into the metal, buried almost to their hilts. 

The creature shifts, chest parting briefly, and Slade stills, wary of catch its attention. Mers eyes are accustomed to the bright glow of a supernova; they can see perfectly in a blindingly lit room, he knows. But they’re less suited to the dark stretches of space between their home stars, where they’re more at risk of starvation - if they can’t find fresh flesh to tide them over. 

He’s been told that mers prefer flesh because of the taste. They certainly don’t _require_ the nutrition, on an evolutionary level. That dangerous expanse of muscle that juts out from their very human waists doubles as a receptor in the same sense that Slade’s solarsails do; those iridescent scales are capable of synthesising solar energy at a rate that rivals even the most modern of solar panels. Mers feed off the heat of dying stars, consuming their flares to sustain themselves. 

Flesh, apparently, is just a flavoursome appetizer. They can still convert the latent heat into energy, if they take a man while he’s still screaming, while his blood is still hot and thrumming in his veins. But Slade understands it to be a preference of palate and nothing more; Mer hunt because they enjoy the thrill of outliving their prey, because they enjoy savouring human flesh. 

These hunters rely more heavily on hearing than sight out in dark airs like these, but as long as Slade doesn’t make any noise louder than its own singing, out this close, it’s unlikely to notice him. Hunters this vicious usually don’t concern themselves with being ambushed. Even if some demented prey manages to jump them, they’re usually more than equipped to dispense the threat with that lengthy tail. 

The mer that has affixed itself to his ship pries itself a few inches off the metal hull, the humming that had been up Slade’s forearms dying in increasingly softer waves now that it’s spare of the source. The vacuum of space consumes whatever remains of the creature’s incessant song, before it presses back down with reignited fervour, efforts returned twofold, and that thrum ripples back out across the hull. 

Larger mers have been known to rattle ships apart with the force of their song, shaking bolts straight out of their sockets with that deep hum. The largest was rumoured to have vibrated a ship straight to pieces, cracking open the hull to pick off the men inside with leisure. A smaller mer like this would have a resonance capable of disrupting a rudder, but Slade’s doubtful it will structurally damage the ship unless left to its song for too long. All things inevitably bend given enough time and will; this truth Slade lives by. 

The mer shakes itself slightly, the movement more of a shimmer than a convulsion, it’s tail oscillating against the keel before it reasserts its hold on the hull and begins to sing again, more insistently this time. Most songs like this would have drawn the attention of a whole crew by now, desperate to have the beast detached from their crippled vessel. It must be getting frustrated. 

All the more advantage for Slade to use to his benefit. He finishes his trek across the bulwark and begins to dip again, coming up on the mer’s right flank. He can see the curve of a pale hip arching above the first row of blue scales, skin glimmering softly with a thousand flecks of captured sun. There he pauses, not even a full six feet from the beast and speaks into his visor. 

“Where are you?” Slade asks, the question more a stern demand than a genuine request for information. 

“Exactly where I should be,” comes the strained drawl. Jason always gets uneasy when they get to the grit of this, to the moment where Slade offers his longevity up to the fates of space and beast. 

“Good,” Slade says shortly, and reaches down to his belt to slide the first cuff free. “I’m in position.” 

A moment of quiet, and then, “Don’t die.” 

Slade smirks into his reflection on the visor, sweeping the enthralled beast with his gaze one more time. “Wouldn’t dream of it, kid.” Then his tone drops to a gravelling surety. “Light him up.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go again! Because who can resist space mermaids? 
> 
> If you haven't heard **blame-my-muses** space shanty yet, you should definitely check it out on [Tumblr](https://blame-my-muses.tumblr.com/post/161005095701/so-this-whole-conversation-proved-to-be-a-bit). It'll probably show up in a later chapter, because I absolutely love it.


	2. Siren

The ship hangs suspended against the backdrop of stars, the distant light of a sol twinkling against its hull like the sun upon his scales. A quick meander over the tips of the masts (outside the grips of the gravitational field, of course) had told Dick as much as he needed to know of it's sparse crew. 

Ships are rarely inactive, Dick’s come to know. Humans hibernate at odd, regular intervals, and their activity is determined entirely by these unintelligible periods of rest, but there’s always unceasing movement. They must be in one such cycle now, because when he glides down to skim the gleaming hull with his chest and palms, Dick can feel the absent churn of life far beneath its surface. 

He can outmaneuver even a ship this small and agile without much effort, so it takes him no time to overtake it. He curls around the foremast, wrapping hands around the keel to slow his descent as he dives again. He maneuvers around one of the auxiliary rudders and brings himself to a halt on the downturn of the stern, revelling in the faint chill of the firm metal. It’s not as cold as some voids of space, and the promise of warmth and heat beneath its surface sends a ripple of ecstasy down Dick’s spine. 

_Humans_ , he thinks, and layers himself against the hull, letting his song rise to an echoing thrum as it reverberates through the conductive metal. It just feels so _satisfying_ to hear his song radiating back at him. He carries his song with him, of course, thrumming in his chest as he transverses the currents of space. But there’s something to be cherished in the loud, cacophonous _symphony_ that greets him when he presses himself flush against the ship. 

Dick settles down against the hull, letting his tactile senses expand out to feel the crescendo of movement within as the humans wake to his song. There’s so much life, and movement, and _heat_ within that hull, translating back up through his bared chest like a drum. Dick purrs and bathes against the metal, hooking the tips of his claws in to keep himself anchored as the ship continues unharried on its journey. 

He’s only attached himself to the hull for perhaps ten minutes when he hears a response distinct from the hustle and bustle of the humans within. 

It’s… a wail. 

Dick stiffens, the muscles along his spine pulling tight as he arches up off the metal, stunned into momentary silence. But the anguished sound disappears as soon as he parts from the varied thrum of the ship’s hull, and Dick’s pressing back down against it again before he can think better. All thoughts of the sweet savour of flesh slip from his mind in the wake of that cry. 

Because that’s a mer, coming from within the ship. That’s a _young_ mer, an adolescent perhaps, but a youngling, a _child._

And the agony in that scream reverberates through Dick like a lightning flare, igniting every pore in barely restrained sympathy. Because whatever pulls a wail like that from the chest of a mer is nothing short of absolutely savage. 

When he’s pressed himself back against the hull, he stills for a moment against the chilled metal. It could be a ruse, he thinks a little belatedly. A ploy to lure unwitting mers to false aid. 

But then he _feels_ the thrum of that agonised song cutting up through his chest, vibrating back at him through the metal hull, and Dick’s nails sharpen. Lengthen to incisor points against the pane of metal, and then he’s burying them into it, shredding with the fervoured desperation of an incensed beast. Sinks them in up to the hilt, deep enough that they catch and he can feel the seep of pressurised air against his skin. 

A lapse, and then the youngling bawls again, and he can locate it more thoroughly this time. Close, very close, lodged up in the stern of the ship, tucked into the lower hull. 

_Near_ , he thinks, and renews his efforts, arching his hips up off the metal so that he can twist his weight down and _force_ himself into the hull, _through_ the hull, to the youngling’s aid. The hull groans under his force, buckling beneath his claws as he finally breaches through and tears in up to his wrists, jagged metal biting into his skin and scratching. 

Dick bears down, frenzied in his horror as the youngling chirps, no doubt sensing his proximity. 

Something lands at the base of his spine. A weight, heavy and solid and sure, and Dick jerks in his confusion, arching around to determine what’s run up against him as his nails catch in the reinforced steel of the hull. 

It’s a man, a human. Taller than the humans he’s used to seeing aboard vessels, and draped in orange and black. Dick stills for the barest moment, the youngling forgotten in the wake of his stunned bemusement. 

It’s not the first time a human has tried to ambush him. He gets a particular thrill out of twisting around and _slamming_ them into their own hulls when they try to straddle his tail, running fingers through his luminescent scales. 

But this one is further up than his tail, seated firmly against the small of his back, and Dick marvels detachedly at how one could have gotten so close to him without his notice. Dick can only chalk it up to him being so desperate for a meal. He gets careless when he’s hungry, he knows, and things begin to slip his notice; this far from a sol, it’s been a few days since he last fed, so imperception is not exactly unexpected. He still twists, still moves to dislodge the man with a lazy sort of efficiency, rolling the weight of his tail under itself to let the force coil up through him, even as he turns back to the hull. The man will be shook free soon enough, and there’s more pressing matters at hand. 

Dick turns back to the breached hull, sinking in halfway up his forearms as he twists to leverage the jagged curl of shredded metal back. If he can just get a grip, he can wrench a full pane off, and the inner hull will be a gas cloud between his fingers compared to this reinforced steel. 

Fingers bite into his scalp, anchoring the man against the buck, and Dick freezes as they twist through his hair, wrapping into the strands. Then there’s _force_ , so much stronger than he’s expecting, driving his forehead into the flat of the hull hard enough that he can’t immediately jerk back. It’s a decent pin, and a flare of unease lights Dick up at the sheer strength behind that grip. 

But if he said he was concerned, he’d be lying. 

He contorts, twisting his lower limb around as he exhales through his gills, using the extra momentum to buck himself up off the metal. Feels the sailor's thighs clench against his bare sides, desperate to maintain his purchase. 

Dick curls his head over his shoulder to bare a mouthful of sharp teeth, glee lighting up his features. He can hear the adrenaline-frenzied thrum when the man's heart kicks up into a violent tempo at the sight of those needle incisors, and Dick's stomach clenches with the promise of blood and warmth soon to fill his mouth. 

Then the sailor jerks forward, flush against his back. His right hand is still fisted in Dick's hair - and _gods_ , he's broader than Dick thought, broader than him, easily - while his left skirts the curve of the mer's ribcage. 

Fingers _slam_ into his open gills, and Dick chokes in shock and flexes them on instinct, trying to close them. Trying to protect the vulnerable flesh and membrane just beneath their surface. But those fingers are digging, delving deeper, and panic lights Dick up from head to tail. 

He rolls, finesse abandoned as he thrashes to throw the sailor off, to dislodge him from the grip he has inside Dick's chest cavity, knuckles nestled up against his lung. The man cants slightly, hand twisting and _pushing_ inside him - _inside him_ \- and those long, gloved fingers wrap firmly around one of his ribs. 

Dick shrieks, stomach turning as he flashes teeth and twists blindly to slam the man against the metal hull. Images of a shattered, leaking skull and a cloud of crystallized red paint his eyelids as he convulses with a scream of pain and fury. 

Then his wrists, buried to the elbow in the shredded hull, catch. His elbow hyperextends, Dick rolls to offset the fleeting flare of pain, and the man's clothed knees bite into his waist. 

The sailor slams his forehead into the hull again, marrying the motion with a firm, nauseating tug on his rib, and Dick keens, pressing himself flat to the metal. As if that will sate the savage on his flank. 

The sailor layers down over him, barrelled chest pressing flush to Dick's shoulder blades, and Dick stills as he hooks his chin over the mer's shoulder. His larynx aligns with the muscle of Dick's shoulder, and he flashes teeth, already turning to _shred_ the foolish man. 

“ _Still_ ,” the sailor orders, the command thrumming down through Dick's shoulder, and he freezes, astonishment getting the better of him. 

The hand slides out of his hair - a concession for his compliance - and he sees the glint of a distant star flash across the sailor's opaque visor. 

“Who?” Dick purrs in a rumbling tenor, matching his tone and he thinks the sailor might chuckle. 

“You’ll see,” he answers, and Dick has enough time to feel a flash of impatience churn through him before the man's now-free right hand curls around his forearm with the cold kiss of steel. 

Dick protests sharply, jerking against the cuff that seals against him, and the hand around his rib yanks warningly. He shimmies down the hull, trying to wrench his hands free. A spray of translucent blood leaks from the gash the thrashing opens up on his forearm, but Dick's consumed with the need to escape this monster before he can inflict any more damage. 

The nausea is building to a violent crescendo as the sailor stabs stiff fingers into his lung membrane, dragging an incensed snarl from Dick's chest. His left arm comes free of the hull, and Dick wastes no time in reaching back to sink inch-long nails into the man's crooked thigh. 

The vacuum of space is cold enough that he feels the blood crystallise beneath his touch, even as the suit adapts to maintain its seal. The sailor's pained grunt thrums through Dick's chest, and he feels a vicious surge of retribution even as another cuff closes below his elbow. 

He tries to drag his claws through the sailor's flesh, but the angle is wrong and he only succeeds in jerking his wrist into a smaller, tighter accompanying cuff. 

“Coward,” Dick snarls, sure the man hears the vibratory slew through the layers of his suit. 

“Beast,” the man replies, calm as a satellite’s sea. 

Dick spits a hiss and violently tugs his other hand free, even as he feels the cuffs begin to hum around his upper limbs. The last of the metal devices closes around his right wrist as Dick bucks the man up onto his upper back, but he knows with a sharp, terse finality that the damage is already done. 

The magnetic cuffs thrum to a painful velocity, dragging his limbs together even as he fights to pull them from his midback. The man shifts, using his knee to knock Dick's bound arms the last inch into alignment, and then they're locked flush against each other. 

Dick feels himself begin to part from the hull as the ship continues to move without him latched onto it. He bleats a warning, but the man's already sliding down to brace Dick's hips with his knees, gloves palms fusing to the panes. 

He glances up through the sailor's splayed arms to meet that passive visor, glaring as he peels lips back from his teeth. He can't be sure, but he gets the impression the man is _smug_. 

The distorted chirp of technological interference translates down through the man's throat into Dick's, but the frequency is such that he can't make out the words. 

He understands the man full and clear when he replies, “Send out the hull crew to secure the tail. Don't keep me waiting.” 

Dick thinks the response is a sharp affirmation, but he's too distracted by the low keen that filters through the hull beneath them, and his mind flashes back to the youngling. He offers a consolatory purr in response, but hears nothing more as the man above him shifts to sit back on his spine, keeping them both pinned to the hull. 

“Do I need to threaten you?” he asks gently, his voice a gravelly purr against Dick’s shoulder. 

“Rot,” he snaps in response, turning his teeth into the hull so he doesn’t have to meet that visored gaze. He knows he’s not getting anywhere with these cuffs incarcerating him, so any resistance is a waste of valuable energy. It’s been three days since he feasted on the flares of a local sol, and Dick knows he can last another three before he begins to feel the aching pangs of true hunger; but that doesn’t mean he's eager to overexert himself on an overzealous human. 

If he waits for them to change out the cuffs, or even just let their guard down once he’s aboard their vessel, it’ll give him the window of opportunity he needs to remind these pests exactly what he is. Besides, busting through a hull is so much simpler from the inside out, and _he_ doesn't have the crippling need to remain in an oxygenated environment. The humans can choke in the cold recesses of space while he basks in the glory of a nourishing sun, for all he cares. Maybe he’ll even make a snack on a few while they’re still hiccuping their last warm breaths. 

The sailor doesn’t say anything more until his relief crew arrives, donned in similar suits as they scale down the arch of the bulwark to meet them, ropes in tow. Dick lays still as they wrap the braided steel around his tail at even intervals, tying complicated knots into the metal that Dick doesn’t bother trying to memorise. He’ll be able to break the bonds in a pinch, if he absolutely has to. But he’s better served leveraging them against something to pry his way out of them; a task much more easily achieved in an environment with friction. 

They don’t haul him over the bulwark onto the deck, as Dick expects. The head sailor loops a lasso around his chest and shuffles back into the dip of his spine as they heave him around to one of the open cargo holds in the side on the stern. 

Dick lets his gaze wander the riveted interior of the hold, noting the girders and overlapping seams of sheet metal. The chamber is flooded with enough artificial light to rival a sol, so Dick’s eyes have no trouble discerning the weak points where the interior hull meets the support beams holding the ship intact. They’ll be useful to know when he has to make his escape. 

Dick hums softly to himself and flexes his claws, still pinned to the flats of his forearms in his midback. One of the suited sailors glides over to a control box, pulling a crank to seal the exterior doors; another useful tool, but ultimately unnecessary for a mer. 

The sailor atop him doesn’t move the whole while, barking orders calmly at the rest of the crew as they float about the room, so Dick tries to ignore him. He shifts uncomfortably when one of the sailors activates the gravity, feeling the invisible hook that latches behind his navel and pulls him down to the chilled hull. He’s felt it before - younglings learn from their hatcheries not to drift too close into the gravitational lull of a sol. But Dick still dislikes the permeating gravity aboard ships. It feels unnatural, like ropes intertwined all over his skin, dragging him down pin him to the hull. 

He can still move. His tail has enough strength and finesse to neatly snap a yardarm if he so wished. It’s cumbersome, mobilising in the artificial gravity that humans seem incapable of existing without, but not impossible. He proves it when the first sailor leans down to unbind the ropes down near his tail fins, and he bucks and slams the limb up into the man. The sharp snap of a too-thin bone reverberates up the hull to him, and Dick bares teeth as the sailor screams in pain. 

The head sailor leans down to press a gloved hand against his gills (which Dick keeps pointedly closed), but he stills again with a glare, the threat loudly received. 

The other ropes are unbound and removed, and Dick flexes his tail absently, testing his range of movement in the confined cargo hold. It’s going to be an awful lot more effort to buck himself up off the steel floor with the gravity, but he can replenish his energy with the taste of the sailor’s warm blood on his lips. The thought makes him grin, a low rumble curling through his throat, and he bares his teeth in a vicious smile as he turns his head over his shoulder to unleash it on the head sailor. 

“Atmosphere,” the man instructs, and then looks down at him. 

Dick can’t see his face, but the man’s posture looks relaxed, _amused_ atop Dick’s back, and the returning rumble of laughter that bubbles and is smothered in the man’s chest gives him pause. 

Then the sailor at the control panel punches a few integral buttons, and heat and oxygen flood the sealed chamber. Dick chokes at the sudden rush of movement against his superheated skin, wincing beneath the eddies as he clenching his gills shut reflexively. Oxygen won’t kill him; he exudes it, so his body is equipped to process excess oxygen in the barren wastelands of space, but that doesn’t mean the sensation of the gas swirling against his over-receptive skin is pleasant. 

Dick hisses and chases down the static, comforting chill of the steel floor. And only then he notices that it’s beginning to heat to an unbearable temperature. 

It’s still not as hot as his own skin; mers adapted long ago to the blisteringly cold anti-atmosphere of space. Whenever they’re not drinking in the radiant heat of sols to keep their blood at an acceptable temperature, they’re churning through energy to keep their blood streaking through their veins. Their humming serves as a means to keep their muscles contracting, to create that incessant internal friction that keeps them warm in the midst of nothingness. Their songs keep them alive. 

Dick doesn’t even have to put voluntary thought into singing; it comes as naturally to him as breathing must to a human. It’s second nature to press himself against a hull and let the melodies thrum through him. 

It’s not as easy to _stop_ singing. 

Dick whines in panic and discomfort, shifting beneath the sailor as the temperature of the air starts to edge into cloying, and shows no sign of stabilising anytime soon. Heat flushes up through him, radiating out from his pores as he tries to pry himself off the too-warm metal and remembers the uncaring snag of gravity. 

A snarl rips up through his throat, and he strains against the cuffs, bucking up off the floor as his pulse pounds viciously through his skull. His blood is reaching a dizzying viscosity now, making him feel lightheaded and nauseous. His stomach rises up to lodge in his throat, and he hunches around the sensation, a panicked sob breaking through his chest 

The heat rushes up on him like a sol’s flare, searing through his pores and lighting him up from head to tail. Dick feels it roll over his skin like a blastwave, crescendoing as it breaches his neck. His vision flashes white, and then blackness sucks him down into a void.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if you guys know this, but open space tends to rest at a toasty -270°C/-457°F. So when you jack up the temperature of a contained atmosphere to a blistering 20°C/68°F, your space mermaids tend to pass out. 
> 
> The space mermaids are back! More pseudo-science and astronautical mysteries abound! We're going to keep shifting perspectives as the chapters progress - next up is First Mate Jason.


End file.
